Constructivism and Psycholinguistic Theories
Constructivism and Psycholinguistic Theories
Constructivism can be assumed to have existed during the same period as the development of Behaviorism in the American educational system. It is a learning theory that involves an individual’s active construction of learning. Constructivism encompasses an integration of learning by combining the existing and new knowledge. However, according to theoretical perspectives, constructivism only occurs when the learner actively participates in the process. Furthermore, learning itself can be perceived as the by-product of an on-going natural state-of-mind and it is not something that can be stimulated or reinforced (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Apart from the general description, constructivism is also consists of key tenets such as the encouragement of the learner’s involvement and autonomy towards learning, learners as exercising will and purpose, fostering the learner’s natural curiosity (Thanasoulas, 2001) and the accordance of the learner’s affect on motivation, beliefs and attitude.
Discussing about psycholinguistics, it generally relates to the belief of most psychologists that linguistics provides important foundation for the discipline. They view language through the ideas of probabilistic patterns. Psycholinguistics emphasizes a formulation process that retrieves and constructs a plan of utterance. The subsequent motoric/articulatory process of executing the actually movement to produce speech represents specific phonological structure of utterance. These ideas about psycholinguistics correlate to the theory that can easily be identified as constructivist in nature. The primary component of psycholinguistics as a theory in reading involves the reader’s reliance on the number of language cueing systems that would enable them to read the text rapidly. However, there are several cueing systems that each reader commonly uses and the majority of them are perceived to be in conjunction with systems such as semantic, syntactic and graphophonic information. Syntactic is related to grammatical structure of the language while semantic is about meaning and graphophonic is more on the visuals.
Constructivism and psycholinguistics offers different theories such as inferencing, which involves filling in the gaps when the learner is in the process of comprehending the perceived oral or written language. This is commonly known as “reading between the lines” (Tracey & Morrow, 2012), it means when the reader is trying to figure out something that is not explicitly stated in the text; therefore the reader is actually inferencing. Another theory is about hypothesis-testing, which means that when the learner is engaged in the reading process, he or she might encounter unfamiliar words. During this experience the reader would make a guess of the meaning of the word and will try to make a connection by using the word in various sentences. If the word sounded correct, the reader would resume reading because he believes that he already have the right context of the reading material. These ideas about constructivism are linked to today’s reading and writing practices. For example, students are being involved in knowledge and skill acquisition obtained from creative and investigative activities.
Teachers allow the students to choose topics for an essay assignment, topic or problem that they can personally relate. Secondly, the students are encouraged to use investigative methods to produce results similar to those of practicing professionals. Inquiry reading for instance is an approach introduced by theorists, which had a profound influence on the American education system (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). It was derived from the Unfoldment theory developed by Froebel, Pestalozzi and Rousseau. The theory suggests the importance of the environment, the learning individual and the role of the teacher in the learning process. As mentioned earlier about giving the students the autonomy to choose their own topic and problems to solve; it emphasizes on the learning approach that encourages the students to have motivation and interest to learn. The theory also suggests that in order for the teachers to optimize the student’s learning skills, they need to formulate, collect data and draw conclusions that would reflect on the given problem (Tracey & Morrow, 2012).
References
Thanasoulas, D. (2001). Constructivist Learning. The weekly column, (54). Retrieved from http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/April2001/art542001.htm.
Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Chapter 4: Constructivism (1920's - Present). In Lenses on reading: An introduction to theories and models (2nd ed.). New York, USA: The Guilford Press.
